IE Assistant

Editors' ReviewDownload.com staffJanuary 10, 2006There's some value in this IE add-on that clears surfing traces and saves Web files and images, but it doesn't seem to match the publisher's estimation.IE Assistant's simple toolbar consists of two icons, one to access the features and one to access the brief Help file. There are three main features: Save to Image for grabbing Web screenshots, List Resources for showing files on a Web page, and IE Sweeper to clean traces and remove browser elements, such as toolbars. The features worked well for the most part, but it frequently seemed to duplicate capabilities already found in IE or in Windows-standard accessories. In our tests, IE Assistant wasn't able to grab a screenshot of a whole Web page if you had to scroll to reach the bottom. It was a little better at downloading files, if only because it grabbed all of the possibilities from the page by category, including images, MP3s, and flash files, but the preview pane never displayed anything for our testers. You just check the ones you want to download. Of course, you'll need a different program to open the files (IE Sweeper only gives you a way to download them). The trace cleaning tools duplicated those found in recent versions of IE.You can accomplish most of what IE Assistant offers with pre-existing Windows and browser tools. All in all, we weren't compelled to pay for what this short seven-day trial version showed us.